A Story of Children and Film

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Simon T @MovieTart Mar 7, 2017 Very much a companion piece to Mark Cousins' monumental A Story of Film, this too has the mood of a dream, a visual meditation on the particular art of portraying childhood in cinema. As before, his selections tend to come from the less well-known ends of world cinema, although he has time to include Spielberg, Loach, Campion and others. Very personal, quite idiosyncratic. See more Dec 31, 2014 A Christmas present to myself. Wonderful. See more Dec 3, 2014 Manages to sustain an interest through some decent observation about children in the history of cinema, but there's no real purpose to this documentary. See more Oct 10, 2014 A touch too artistic but there's no denying the knowledge and eye Mark Cousins has for world cinema, this time from knee-level! See more Aug 31, 2014 I am sure this documentary is brilliant for anyone studying children in cinema. But I am not, so whilst I found most of it vaguely interesting, it didn't hold my attention. See more Apr 10, 2014 Not sure this is a story. More like an observation and a musing- a visual essay. It starts with Cousins' informal home-movie observing his nephew and niece being children, and moves on to a series of clips from 53 films, from 25 countries. Now that's eclectic. Many are films I have not come across, and stretch right back in time to the silent movies. Cousins takes us on a slightly ramshackle tour, highlighting the various angles on childhood that these movie-clips illustrate ;- the strop ;the shyness ; the child-as-parent ; the adventuresomeness ; the resilience; and so on. It's gently done stuff, as befits Cousins' soft Northern Irish accent. The central point seems to be that childhood has a common thread throughout the worlds of geography and time. The film provokes the viewer to examine his/her own childhood and also the way that society sees childhood, and even how should we view childhood. A timely and provoking piece that is very enjoyable in its understated way. It made me reflect how I am shy to watch children closely if they are not family. And how sad that this is a reflection of the change in our society during my lifetime, when they are. as this film shows so well, such an interesting bunch of human beings. I'm not sure I got the connection with Cousins' visit to and (beautiful) clips of, Skye. Perhaps it's this whole business of really seeing, of looking "on". See more Read all reviews

A Story of Children and Film

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